Business today gets done online, and the digital transformation of large enterprises is driving nearly every single transaction to the cloud, the web, mobile apps, and more.

The virtualization of these digital enterprises is creating substantial gains in employee productivity, with an unprecedented number of them “dialing in” from remote locations, and a parallel growth in the number of on-site workers in offices, hospitals and medical clinics, in classrooms, public venues and more staying connected using business workflow apps as companions.

If there’s one thing security professionals should understand and acknowledge – whether they’re part of an organization’s multi-person IT security team or the CISO guiding that team – it’s that the widespread, varying and rapidly changing threat landscape is impossible to keep up with. For every step an organization takes in protecting its infrastructure, attackers are two steps ahead working to figure out how to break in. Why? Hackers are agile, can launch hundreds if not thousands of attacks at a time and, of course, are not constrained by employee, customer and shareholder demands.

Disruption is happening all around us in the incredibly fast-moving world of real time communications, whether the movement to telco cloud, to full NFV environments, to software defined networking inside enterprises, to the embedding of voice and video messaging into business applications, to AI, IoT, biometrics and more.

With the modernization of networks accelerating heading into 2018, the promise of more open technologies and more orchestrated ecosystems has become a reality for Communications Service Providers (CSPs) who are now able to spin up, deliver, bill for and manage new services faster and more efficiently than ever.

Over the past 15 years Unified Communication (UC) services have become a normal part of enterprise communications, features like presence and IM along with voice and video are part of our work lives. The advent of cloud-based UC has made it even easier to roll-out sophisticated services to anyone with an internet connection.

As communications networks evolve, interconnects tend to grow in numbers and complexity. Carriers and enterprises are converting core networks to IP, and are using IP to con­nect with peering entities. For the network core to deal with the emerging universe of applications, networks and devices, those elements must first be normalized at the edge.

We've been helping hundreds of the world's largest Communications Service Providers (CSPs) transform their networks, as one of the first movers in the Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) movement.

Is your enterprise ready to support wave after wave of new technologies already disrupting and, in some cases, destroying traditional business?

Communications and collaboration are undergoing a major “uber-transformation” and, to a large extent, this is being driven by a new generation of customers, workers, and partners who have grown up mobile first, cloud first, and constantly connected.  Enterprises who aren’t adapting fast enough are crumbling.

As the Exchange of Everything continues to accelerate, it’s time for real-time communications leaders to look way beyond their traditional networks and network services to recognize the massive opportunities opening up, given the Digitization of Everything.

It's my favorite time of year as GENBAND brings together hundreds of technology and telecom professionals at the top of their game to compare notes about the never dull worlds of networks and real-time communications applications, while sharing their experiences, and revealing visions into a future of hyper-connected digital conversations.